This is a continuation of a series recapping the past two years of travels through Latin America by car, each Dispatch is a single country summary from Mexico, through Central America's Guatemala-Honduras-Nicaragua-Costa Rica-Panama and through South America's Columbia-Ecuador and Peru. The loose plan is to continue driving to the bottom of the world, Ushuaia, Argentina. These are stories of characters, experiences and hardships.
Nicaragua
August 2009
Traveling alone. Stocked up with Pop-Tarts. I stood in the breezeway waiting for the border officer to process car papers and stamp my passport, when I began chatting it up with the shoeshine boys and 'expediters', the young men who hustle a buck helping people move paperwork through border control.
It was the same remote crossing that exiled Honduran President Zelaya, just two weeks earlier, had tried to re-enter Honduras from Nicaragua to reclaim his presidency, he and a throng of supporters were turned back amid a media storm. Third World politics as practiced in Latin American are a form unto their own, colorful and dramatic with ample chest thumping.
Zelaya later, did successfully sneak back into Honduras in the trunk of a car, his hope was for a popular movement to sweep him back into power, but ended on a less exciting note, holed up in the Brazilian embassy for a month. Imagine that, a head of state sneaking around in the trunk of a car! An earlier attempt, before the trunk stunt, his private jet flew to the capital and circled around for an hour trying to land, Honduran authorities refused him by placing army trucks on the runway. In other parts of the country armed men parked old buses on unimportant runways defending against persistent Zelaya.
This day at the border, with it's shoeshine boys and 'expediters', was devoid of activity, empty and lonely.
While my papers were being triple-checked by a third policeman, a prostitute winked and gestured, I smiled and drove on, thinking, A rough and tumble border crossing, like this one, is no place for a moral lapse.
The Price of Rum
Esteli, Nicaragua. The first night. The price of rum, Flor de Cana, was more in Nicaragua, the country it's made in, than it was in neighboring Honduras. This started an argument with the liquor store owner and two locals who made doughnuts on the side. Over beers, the question of price was left unresolved, while I made friends with the doughnut guys, Merdardo and Pablo.
Esteli, Nicaragua. The first night. The price of rum, Flor de Cana, was more in Nicaragua, the country it's made in, than it was in neighboring Honduras. This started an argument with the liquor store owner and two locals who made doughnuts on the side. Over beers, the question of price was left unresolved, while I made friends with the doughnut guys, Merdardo and Pablo.
Although he was pleasant to be with, Merardo wore a natural expression of fury on his face that showed in his eyes and cheeks. He grew agitated debating the coup in Honduras and tossed back the last half of his beer with a fury that matched his natural expression. His friend Pablo, watched with curiosity.
Nicaraguans, like Hondurans are passionately expressive and would talk about anything and debate freely, unlike Americans who tend to be fearful of sharing opinions with each other. Merdardo surprised me with a business card, he was a multi-level marketing man; he had his fingers in a hotel, doughnuts and Herbalife. I still get email blasts telling me how I can lose weight and live longer with Herbalife.
In the morning Pablo and Merdardo were making doughnuts by hand for their upstart, Super Donuts, in the kitchen of the hotel. Made by hand without tools to cut or shape the doughnuts, cooked in a large pot of oil that held less than a dozen at a time. Nearly rolling with happiness in the sugar and cinnamon the doughnuts were covered in, I ate them still hot, right out of the cooker.
Coffee Plantations and an Island
Preferring back-country travel with its smaller towns, I avoided the big cities and spent most time in the coffee region with its cool climate, staying at plantations from another era. In contrast to this natural setting of low green hills and the beloved coffee plant, it was here, after nine months on the road, I had my first case of traveler's burnout. I weathered it out by hiding in a cheap hotel, avoiding decisions while watching movies and nursing a bottle of Flor de Cana in a pink room. I half-recovered.
The second half of recovery came on isolated Isla de Ometepe, in the middle of gigantic Lake Nicaragua, riding horses and taking walks. I gained weight eating Marie's home-cooked food, the only restaurant on my side of the island and spent afternoons playing with her pet monkey. It was a tiny Capuchin monkey with a trumpet-shaped penis, cream colored and always sticking out.
Coping with burnout and conversations that repeated themselves, I needed the small world of island life that let me return to my cat-like solitary ways, a world of walks, books, and journals. I was looking forward to meeting Marjolein in a couple weeks time. Like one savors a fine piece of chocolate, I begin re-reading Dostoevsky's, Crime and Punishment.
The first night on the island, I slept in my truck after drinking aguardiente, moonshine with a group of local men. I met them at a bull-riding contest, it was a comical event, as we sat passing the bottle on the rickety stands; it is an easy to drink, hard hitting sugar-cane liquor. It was rumored that the old men who went crazy, did so from drinking too much aguardiente over the years (I met three or four while on the island, I'd give dialog of the conversations, but could not understand one mad-slurred word).
It was Saturday night and the place was packed with people, beer, loud music, lazy bulls and cheap food. The rides were pitiful: a man would mount a bull tied to a post, then released for a 'ride' on a sad-looking barn-sour bull. It was more akin to a walk, than a ride. So we drank. And I slept in the truck. During the night a drunk tried to break in twice. Once he realized I was inside, he asked to come in to sleep. Island life.
The El Porvenir was set on the slope of a stale volcano, surrounded by raw jungle. In the middle of a lake the island was far from city lights, at night it would turn the darkest pitches of black, like a horrible dream of being stuffed into a sealed closet without a trace of light.
It was two or three in the morning when I got up to pee, remembering to grab the flashlight before I set foot outside the bed. No sooner than I switched it on, a juvenile tarantula was walking the floor. I relieved myself. Went back to bed. And let Junior be. In the morning, I bought stolen fruit from an old man without shoes or money. He was begging for spare change and I wanted something in return and that's when the fruit appeared.
The same routine the next night, a midnight pee, and there was Junior defying gravity, walking up the lime-green wall.
Enough, I thought, If he can do that, then very little stands between me, him and the bed I sleep on.
I was much calmer than I thought I'd be when I released him outside after capturing him with a shaving mug (surely this dates me) and a piece of cardboard.
I was much calmer than I thought I'd be when I released him outside after capturing him with a shaving mug (surely this dates me) and a piece of cardboard.
Friends of the Tarantula
A mouse visited nightly and left droppings throughout the brown-tiled room. A cycle began: black blunty shits left in the night, swept up in the morning by cleaning lady, and repeated on the mouse's night-shift. A giant cricket-like insect, the size of my hand, came out at night and would sit perfectly still on the mint colored wall for hours. The last night I saw her, she laid eggs, or rather inserted, fat wood-like splinters into the sheets and mattress. Life at El Porvenir. I wondered how Marjolein would like it.
It was at El Porvenir and Marie's three-table restaurant that Marjolein joined me for three months of travel in Central America. She met the hard-on prone monkey, who promptly peed on her after gaining a perch on her shoulder.
The American Cafe. I parked in front and walked off to do errands in Moyogalpa, a two-road village on Isla de Ometepe, it's where you went for internet and food stuffs. It had several two-shelf food shops and idle taxi drivers drinking beer waiting for fares. I contributed to the evils of drink & drive by buying a group of them a beer while I drank mine. After errands I stood in front of American Cafe, and decided it didn't look inviting, until I saw the Used Books sign. Like a chronic drug addict, lacking any resistance walked in. Before I could set foot inside the cafe, I was pressed by an aggressive, prickly old white woman with an English accent, Is that your car? You're parked in my spot, that spot is for customers. Are you staying here? Came the blast in a village with fifteen cars.
Her pettiness was out of place, No, just the books.
If you want some good American food, come here, she continued on.
Yeah, but you have an English accent, and you guys aren't known for decent food, I thought to myself.
It was an unpalatable combination: a British cook with American territoriality.
While real estate man and I tried to start conversation, she began interrupting, The books are over there, they are .35 each.
OK, thanks, As real estate man and I tried again over his plate of pasta. We hadn't exchanged a full sentence yet, because of our pesky host.
She hovered over us, We have super chocolate cake, she blared, cutting in, if you want a slice.
No, thanks, I ate, hoping real estate man could finish with how the market fell out and how small plots on the island were hard sells.
How about you, an investment?
No, not looking to buy land, besides I'm a nomad, it just wouldn't work.
Our travels, the first Marjolein and I were to make together, on the Rio San Juan were amongst the most memorable on the Central America isthmus; setting off in boats across the lake and down river to the Caribbean coast staying in settlements along the way. The San Juan is an old pirates highway that runs along the northern border of Costa Rica. The road-less jungle remains undeveloped since the 1850s, when the U.S. government wanted to develop a rival shipping canal to the one the French started in Panama.
It was the best coffee to-go I ever had. Black water from a Styrofoam cup in a cramped seat of a small fast river boat. The seduction of morning mist over glassy water, the sun weak, and a densely dark jungle with birds in dawn symphony. Coffee, me and no conversation -just the sound of water rushing by and the drone of the outboard motor. It was our last boat on the San Juan.
Before leaving Nicaragua I paid my first bribe to a traffic cop, who graciously opened the conversation with a compliment on wearing my seat belt, then promptly found fault with my car papers. I haggled from $20 to $5 and Marjolein and I were on our way for Costa Rica.
After the exchange with the traffic cop, I thought, They are so flexible, the Latin American legal system rocks!
I learned bribes did not come at gunpoint or under threat of jail, but in Dollars, in a friendly flexible way. The horror stories people back home told with such glee were not coming true.
For Select Past Dispatches on Nicaragua hit these select links and look for the Costa Rica summary in next Dispatch Number 89-
The Cost of Rum with Merdardo and Pablo-
My First Bribe, Glad to see You are Wearing Your Seat-belt-
Reflections on Material Wealth: North vs South-
Brief Observations in a Short Format, Errant Thoughts-
More Errant Thoughts-
Paracas, Peru
